President Trump’s brief to the Supreme Court urging the justices to  “put a swift and decisive end” to efforts to disqualify him from ballots nationwide brings a long-simmering constitutional drama one step closer to a denouement. 

The Nine, three of whom Mr. Trump appointed, have set a February 8 date for arguments over whether the Supreme Court of Colorado erred in ruling, by a 4-3 margin, that the Disqualification Clause of the 14th Amendment bars Mr. Trump from a candidacy for president. The amendment ordains that someone who once swore an oath to the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection” is blocked from holding future office.

Colorado is far from alone. As Mr. Trump notes, “efforts are underway in more than 30 states to remove President Trump from the primary and general-election ballots.” Another state, Maine, has likewise blocked him from the ballot, a decision undertaken not by a court but by that state’s Democratic secretary of state. Mr. Trump calls these efforts “dubious.” 

Mr. Trump made his filing as he was fresh from a victory in the Iowa caucuses and, some polls suggest, poised to repeat that feat in New Hampshire. He writes that a ruling that greenlights disqualification threatens “to disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans” and promises “to unleash chaos and bedlam if other state courts and state officials follow Colorado’s lead.” 

The 45th president asks the Supreme Court to reverse the Centennial State’s decision and “end these unconstitutional disqualification efforts once and for all.” He marshals an armada of arguments to keep his name on the ballot, and one of them has already succeeded in court before.

A state district court judge in Colorado, Sarah Wallace, ruled that while Mr. Trump did “engage in insurrection,” the presidency is not an “an officer of the United States” and therefore is inapplicable to the 45th president. That interpretation, though, was overruled.

That point could be a focus of disputation next month. Mr. Trump’s position draws a bright line between “officers of the United States” and the “president who appoints and commissions them.” In the Appointments, Impeachment, and Commissions clauses, the national parchment appears to contemplate the president as a position apart from “officers,” not merely one among their ranks. For one thing, the Constitution says that the president shall commission “all” the officers of the United States. No president has ever commissioned himself.

President Trump, while urging the high court to adopt Judge Wallace’s position, also wants it to dispose of her finding of insurrection. He writes that he “never participated in or directed any of the illegal conduct that occurred at the Capitol” and that he “repeatedly called for peace, patriotism, and law and order.” No January 6 defendant has been charged with insurrection. Mr. Trump was impeached on that count, but discovered by the Senate to be “not guilty” and acquitted. 

The brief also notes that the court “has on occasion allowed congressionally created remedial schemes to implicitly preclude other means of enforcement,” meaning that Section Three cannot be enforced wily-nily by state judges and officials, but gains teeth only  “through congressional implementing legislation.” Mr. Trump views this as a safeguard against the “antidemocratic nature” of the Disqualification Clause. 

Mr. Trump adds that the Supreme Court has prohibited  “states from prescribing their own qualifications for the presidency or modifying the Constitution’s eligibility criteria in any manner.” He adds that the Constitution requires that the president must clear the Disqualification Clause only while he “holds office,” not when he is merely a candidate.

The Disqualification Clause applies to all who swear to “support the Constitution,” language provided in Article VI that comprises the promises made by all officials besides the president. His oath is adumbrated in Article II, and nowhere includes the word “support.” Instead, he swears his own bespoke oath, to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Even as Mr. Trump asserts that Section Three does not apply to the president, he refuses to give ground in his refusal of the insurrectionist label, arguing that those who accuse him of that head rely on the argument that he has “powers of telepathy” sufficient to envision that the crowd at the Capitol would turn violent. He adds that his speech at the Ellipse “would be regarded as entirely benign had they come from any other person.”